Sorry, I can't resist. And, I'll preface this by saying OF COURSE I AM JOKING. Here it goes:
I've clashed many times with folks here on HN who are super-pro-government liberals. They take every opportunity to point out how government has built everything of value to us and how government has wisely invested in infrastructure and other projects that make our lives possible. The implication, of course, is that we should be pro-government, pay more taxes and be thankful we are allowed to flourish under such a system.
One of their favorite things to say is "government created the Internet".
Fantastic! Let's take the good with the bad. If government is going to be credited with the good then we credit them with the bad as well. They created such a shitty system that we are all under surveillance, like it or not.
Not so you say? Well, this kind of thing was nearly impossible before our government created the Internet. They must have had ulterior motives and knew it could be used for this.
Why didn't they protect us with regulations BEFORE the Facebook's and Google's of the 'net were even up and running? They knew what they were creating.
Anyhow. I am not much of a comedian but there's a joke in there somewhere. The point is that government is an ass. They fuck-up nearly everything they do.
This "internet == surveillance state" thing is very real and it is something governments (PLURAL) are benefiting from immensely. Never before in the history of humanity has it been possible to spy on individual human beings with this degree of granularity. And it won't get any better for probably another five to ten years, if ever.
>I've clashed many times with folks here on HN who are super-pro-government liberals.
Since we're talking about the surveillance state, we shouldn't be leaving the super-pro-government conservatives out of this. In the US (where these lib/con terms seem to matter most), both major parties love the surveillance state, and this is tied in heavily with the warfare state that both parties love as well.
I'm not very optimistic that the situation is going to improve. Privacy is increasingly something of yesterday, not today, and certainly not of the future. Those who will enjoy some degree of privacy will be the ones who know how to achieve it, and many aren't going to bother, just as they don't today (people are lining up to give it away, in fact).
>The point is that government is an ass. They fuck-up nearly everything they do.
No disagreement here, though I'd suggest that the only things at which government seems to excel are areas where no one should want to excel. I'm thinking primarily of war, excessive policing, and weird, arbitrary laws.
> we shouldn't be leaving the super-pro-government conservatives out of this.
You are absolutely correct.
> the only things at which government seems to excel are areas where no one should want to excel. I'm thinking primarily of war, excessive policing, and weird, arbitrary laws.
That is probably true as well. It's sad to think that we will all live to see more wars.
I don't believe it was a conspiracy from the start, but it was serendipitous for governments that the internet is so leaky security-wise. It would be wise to establish privacy boundaries that governments and companies cannot cross by international law, but it would be even wiser if our technology could become inherently secure.
I didn't downvote you, because I think your heart is in the right place. But this statement:
"...Well, this kind of thing was nearly impossible before our government created the Internet..."
really does betray a fundamental misunderstanding of the technologies that were around before the internet. The government really has had this power for quite a while. In fact, the only difference now... is that people give the government pictures of themselves to match faces to the phone conversations. And, of course, continuous position data... as opposed to the sort of discrete position data you could get in the 70's and 80's.
Well, I am not a surveillance expert by any possible stretch of the imagination. That said, I seriously doubt governments could access the kind of personal data (behavioral and otherwise) they can today back in the 70's and 80's. sure, if they targeted someone they could follow their life and gather lots of data. That required devoting people to follow, watch, study and record a persons every action. Today things are quite different. A "recording" of everyone's actions is being made every minute of every day. When someone becomes a government target they can virtually rewind the last n years and learn everything about them with nearly zero human cost in relative terms.
I've clashed many times with folks here on HN who are super-pro-government liberals. They take every opportunity to point out how government has built everything of value to us and how government has wisely invested in infrastructure and other projects that make our lives possible. The implication, of course, is that we should be pro-government, pay more taxes and be thankful we are allowed to flourish under such a system.
One of their favorite things to say is "government created the Internet".
Fantastic! Let's take the good with the bad. If government is going to be credited with the good then we credit them with the bad as well. They created such a shitty system that we are all under surveillance, like it or not.
Not so you say? Well, this kind of thing was nearly impossible before our government created the Internet. They must have had ulterior motives and knew it could be used for this.
Why didn't they protect us with regulations BEFORE the Facebook's and Google's of the 'net were even up and running? They knew what they were creating.
Anyhow. I am not much of a comedian but there's a joke in there somewhere. The point is that government is an ass. They fuck-up nearly everything they do.
This "internet == surveillance state" thing is very real and it is something governments (PLURAL) are benefiting from immensely. Never before in the history of humanity has it been possible to spy on individual human beings with this degree of granularity. And it won't get any better for probably another five to ten years, if ever.